News – Page 48 – Hawk Toolbox by LeadsOnline

Curbing police data collection aim of proposed SC law: ‘Our rights are being eroded’

January 28, 2019/in News /by Samantha Roussel

By Andrew Brown abrown@postandcourier.com

Jan 27, 2019

COLUMBIA — A top South Carolina lawmaker wants to restrict how police use some of the newest tools available for tracking people’s cell phones and travel in the state, arguing the technology violates people’s rights as American citizens.

House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia, has sponsored two bills this year to either ban or limit police agencies’ use of cell site simulators and automatic license plate readers, two law enforcement tools that are now being used widely throughout the country.

The cell site simulators mimic cellphone towers, allowing police agencies to collect the data and location from every phone in a geographic area.

The license plate readers, attached to police vehicles or located over highways and streets, collects every license plate number it encounters. It automatically records an image of the vehicle and the date, time and location that information is collected.

It’s unclear if Rutherford’s bills will gain any traction in the Legislature. There are many Republicans across the aisle from Rutherford who strongly support privacy rights but many law enforcement agencies see the devices as powerful tools for fighting crime.

Rutherford, a defense attorney and a proponent of civil liberties, believes there aren’t enough checks in place to ensure the technology isn’t being abused. He points out that police currently don’t have to seek a warrant from a judge to use such technology in an investigation.

“Our rights are being eroded and we don’t even know it,” Rutherford said. “Privacy, freedom, the things that are most important to Americans and South Carolinians.”

Read more from The Post and Courier HERE

AT&T’s Mobile 5G Network Goes Live, Service to Launch Dec. 21

January 25, 2019/in News /by Samantha Roussel

AT&T promised mobile 5G before the end of 2018 and is set to deliver, though cutting it close to the self-imposed deadline.

AT&T lit up the first mobile 5G network in the U.S. today, with service launching in select parts of 12 cities on Friday.

This is not a full-blown launch, and AT&T acknowledged initial reach will be limited to dense urban areas. Still, Dec. 21 will be the first day certain consumers can get their hands on a commercial 5G mobile device – the Netgear Nighthawk 5G Mobile Hotpot― and connect to a live standards-based 5G network.

“This is the first taste of the mobile 5G era,” said Andre Fuetsch, president, AT&T Labs and chief technology officer, in a statement. “Being first, you can expect us to evolve very quickly. It’s early on the 5G journey and we’re ready to learn fast and continually iterate in the months ahead.”

AT&T noted that initially it will offer “select” businesses and consumers the Netgear Mobile Hotspot, plus 5G data at no cost for a 90 day trial period. In spring 2019, AT&T will start offering the hotspot for $499 and 15 GB of data for $70 per month.

AT&T and Verizon have both announced plans to offer 5G smartphones from Samsung in early 2019.

The 12 cities included in AT&T’s initial launch are Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Fla., Louisville, Ky., Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Raleigh, N.C., San Antonio and Waco, Texas.

Judge: State must prove cellphone tracing technology in Zimmerman murder case

January 25, 2019/in News /by Samantha Roussel

BLOOMINGTON — The state must provide more information that cellular technology used to gather potential evidence against a Bloomington man accused of killing his ex-wife is reliable, a judge ruled Tuesday.

The hearing in the Kirk Zimmerman murder case pitted dueling experts against each other on technology used to pinpoint the path Kirk Zimmerman’s vehicle may have traveled on Nov. 3, 2014, around the time his ex-wife, Pam Zimmerman, is believed to have been shot in her Bloomington office. The experts also disagreed about how information was gather from cell phone records.

The 60-year-old defendant is charged with killing his former wife.

The technology known as Real Time Tool measures the time it takes a signal to travel from a cell phone to a tower and back.

Despite Cell Data Privacy Right, Kidnapping Defendant Can’t Suppress Location Evidence

January 24, 2019/in News /by Samantha Roussel

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed its previous denial of defendant Jay Goldstein’s motion to suppress his cell site location information, reasoning Goldstein had no reasonable right to privacy.

By P.J. D’Annunzio | January 22, 2019 at 01:09 PM

While recent U.S. Supreme Court precedent states that a search warrant must be obtained in order to retrieve a defendant’s cellphone-linked location data, that rule does not apply retroactively in the case of a man involved in a kidnapping scheme.

After rehearing argument in the matter, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Tuesday affirmed its previous denial of defendant Jay Goldstein’s motion to suppress his cell site location information (CSLI), reasoning Goldstein had no reasonable right to privacy.

That decision emerged in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court ruling in Carpenter v. United States, in which the high court held that defendants do, in fact, have a right to privacy when it comes to cellphone data and that law enforcement is required to seek a warrant to obtain that evidence.

Despite that, Third Circuit Judge Jane Roth wrote in the court’s majority opinion that the prosecution acted in good faith because at the time its acquisition of the data without a warrant was legal. Prosecutors hoped to place Goldstein at the scene of the crime using the data.

Read more from New Jersey Law Journal HERE

What is RCS messaging? Here’s all you need to know about the successor to SMS

January 23, 2019/in News /by Samantha Roussel

Google Fi is now getting support for RCS Chat

Let’s face it, text messages are an anachronistic pain in the rear. They don’t support read receipts, group messaging features, or the animated stickers your pals share on apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat. They depend on a cellular connection — if you’re roaming or you don’t have a signal, you can’t send or receive text messages — and they’re annoyingly limited to 160 characters in length. Despite all those limitations, and predictions of its demise, text messaging, also known as SMS (Short Message Service), remains incredibly popular.

Even with all of the faults, 97 percent of smartphone owners send text messages, making it the most widely used feature on smartphones. To make the service more valuable and competitive with messaging apps, smartphone manufacturers and carriers are teaming up with the cell phone industry’s governing bodies to develop a modern take on texting — Rich Communication Services (RCS), which combines the best of Facebook Messenger, iMessage, and WhatsApp into one platform. So what is RCS messaging, and how does it work? Here’s everything you need to know.